Apr 30
Human Services Grad Leading Adolescent Treatment Center
April 30, 2024 -
Cynthia Lassiter of Rockingham has been working in mental health services for 26 years, and her passion for helping people has not diminished one bit since she started all those years ago.
Lassiter is the program supervisor for PORT Health in Aberdeen. The residential rehabilitative facility provides substance abuse and mental health treatment for adolescents ages 13 to 17½. It is operated by PORT Health Services, a Critical Access Behavioral Health Agency licensed by the state that serves over 20 locations across the eastern part of North Carolina.
While Lassiter has worked with adults, she said she really enjoys working with the adolescent population and “watching the kids change.”
“Sometimes I get asked, ‘How can you work with kids this long?’ Adolescents are more teachable than adults,” she said.
No matter what age you are working with, Lassiter is quite frank about this profession of human services: “You either love it or hate. There’s no in-between.”
A Desire to Help Others
Lassiter was working for the Fruit of the Loom factory when it shut down operations in Richmond County in 1996. She decided to follow in the steps of her sister, who was in the Human Services program at Richmond Community College.
“I wanted to help other people, to do something that was people-oriented,” Lassiter said.
Lassiter said she enjoyed the two years she spent at RichmondCC. She was the Human Services Club president, and she received multiple scholarships.
“It was a great experience. The instructors are really caring, very helpful and very much involved in how students are doing in class,” she said.
Graduating in 1998, Lassiter started working as a residential technician for the facility in Aberdeen, which at the time was owned by Sandhills Mental Health. In 2009, it came under the ownership of PORT Health Services.
Lassiter went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in human services from Gardner-Webb University and a master’s degree in mental health counseling from Walden University. She also continued to work her way up the ranks at the facility.
PORT Health
As program supervisor at PORT Health, Lassiter manages a staff of 12 who provide 24-hour care in the eight-bed facility. Adolescents typically spend four to six months in the program.
“There are two elements to our program. There is day treatment, which consists of individual and group therapy, and then we do residential therapy, where the kids live on site,” Lassiter explained.
The co-ed facility has a school with two teachers, and the youth are in school four hours a day Monday through Friday. The youth are also responsible for cooking their own meals and doing their own laundry.
Lassiter said they can help 18-year-olds leaving the program find housing and employment so that they can be self-sufficient.
According to Lassiter, PORT Health has the only residential adolescent treatment centers for substance abuse and mental health issues in the state of North Carolina. In addition to the eight-bed facility in Aberdeen, there is a 10-bed facility in Greenville.
“That’s the total number of beds you have in the whole state,” Lassiter said, emphasizing the need for more treatment centers. “It takes a lot to get these kids help. There’s family involvement, gang involvement, criminal activity, children with children, children expecting children. It’s a lot to take on and work through.”
Again, Lassiter doesn’t mince words about this line of work. She said people can get burned out quickly, which is why she likes hiring interns (many coming from RichmondCC’s Human Services program). This experiential learning activity helps students decide if this profession is right for them by placing them in a work environment similar to what they may encounter once they enter the workforce.
“The job is only as hard as you make it. These kids are following strict schedules from the time they wake up in the morning to the time they go to bed,” Lassiter said. “You have to have good boundaries. I tell people when you leave and go home, you have to leave it all here.”
Lassiter wants to save every child who comes through the program, but after a quarter of a century helping troubled youth, she remains realistic.
“I know I can’t save them. But I can help them save themselves,” Lassiter said.
Earn a Human Services Degree
To learn more about the Human Services program, call the Career & Transfer Advising Center at (910) 410-1700 or visit either campus in Hamlet or Laurinburg.